


Golden Son and Daughter of Steel

by HunterArtemis



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, brienne deserves happiness, jaime deserves character development, they deserve to be happy, this was written out of anger and spite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 19:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18971857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HunterArtemis/pseuds/HunterArtemis
Summary: “Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”- Kahlil GibranBrienne was about to let happiness slip through her fingers, and Jaime had given up on the concept a long time ago. Resigned to his fate, he never thought she'd come to save him.





	1. The Mourning

**Author's Note:**

> If there are any weird timeline things (for example, Tormund still being in Winterfell) it’s because the author kind of forgot where people were, but I guess that doesn't matter.

Many in Winterfell saw the newly knighted ser Brienne weeping in the courtyard.

Her jaw was clenched painfully tight, every muscle in her large frame still, and with eyes full of tears she made a pitiful sight compared to the brave and indestructible warrior she was a mere day ago. A few early risers and revellers that hadn’t made it to bed yet roamed close enough to ask if she would come inside the hall for a mug of mulled wine or a bowl of soup but she paid them no heed as she sat in the falling snow gazing mournfully towards the gates of Winterfell.

The only thing she reacted to was Tormund wrapping a warm fur around her and sitting for a while. He didn't force her to say anything or ask her any questions, but he could see the presence of heartbreak inhabiting her like a ghost. The subtle glow of determination in her eyes had been snuffed out as she shivered in the cold waiting for something impossible to occur.

 

She thanked him quietly between her sniffles and pulled the furs more tightly around her shoulders.

 

Eventually, as the sun came up she made her way back to her bed, cold and empty. Her nights had always been devoid of the warmth of another body, both by choice and necessity of being the only woman in barracks of nothing but overly impassioned men, but somehow with this one man she'd grown accustomed to having a weight next to her. He made the bed feel more home than she'd ever felt away from Evenfall Hall.

She almost wished she'd never fallen for the golden-haired knight; so beautiful even covered in mud and blood and snarling like a cornered lion while she dragged him halfway across the continent. He was obnoxious, arrogant, disrespectful, and cruel at times, but she managed to chip away at his superficial mask to see the things underneath the solid gold armour his family had forged around him.

All he knew was rejection; from his father for not being able to read words on a page properly, from his sister for not being good enough for her, from the people who refused to trust him after he became the Kingslayer, and he was so miserable from craving approval he’ll never get from those he loved that he'd given up. She thought she had helped him recognise that not everyone would see him as a killer or just the Lannister Kingsguard knight, but as Jaime, but obviously, she was wrong. He was still going back to the people he knew would never love him the way he needed them to.

As she crawled into bed and wrapped herself in the soft, decadent furs, trying to brave the chill of the room, she realised she’d let the fire go out in her hearth.

That was the first thing she’d learned in the North: always lay more wood when you leave a room so the fire will stay lit and the room will always be invitingly warm after the harsh winds of winter.

Another wave of grief overwhelmed her and she turned onto her side away from where he lay a few hours ago, seemingly content with her. She covered her face with her hands, beginning to sob openly in the privacy of the room she’d been so graciously afforded by the Starks.

How did she let herself fall victim to his charms? She knew his kind well, and while it was never her they’d turn their attentions to, she’d seen the carnage men like him had left in the wake of their desires. She’d seen it time and time again, and it was hard to watch ladies who deserved more weeping over men who told them they were loved. The women always had sad eyes, broken trusts, occasionally even a swell at their bellies as they watched the men ride off with their freedom while they were left disgraced and dishonoured.

A baby. That would be the saddest outcome of this unfortunate situation, she supposed. She’d probably be shipped back to Tarth by the Starks to seek shelter with her father.

He’d give it, and gladly to have her home, but if the child had his golden hair, his perfect smile, any ounce of his lion’s courage, she knew she would find it hard to be a mother without him.

Her hands left her face slowly, the tears slowing their descent from her eyes, and she replayed her internal tirade curiously. She wasn’t telling herself she didn’t want a baby, as she’d thought in the past. She was telling herself that if she was with child she wanted him to be a part of their lives. She wanted a family with him. A future.

Within a moment a false memory clouded her mind. It showed her in her warm bedroom back at Evenfall Hall, fire crackling in the large hearth like it did every evening for as long as she could remember. She was in her favourite plush chair she had borrowed from it’s pair in her father’s library, polishing an already shining blade and smiling at her golden-haired knight. He looked healthy and happy, smiling his perfect smile, but not at her. He gazed down at the toddler in his lap with soft eyes, bouncing him on his knee as the he giggled and clapped his chubby little hands together. He looked up, catching her eye and saying something through a laugh, but his words were muffled by her daydream and all she could do was reach for his hand before the vision faded and she was back in her lonely, freezing room.

It came to her all at once with a startling clarity. She didn’t know why the words never came until now, whether she didn’t want to believe it, or was afraid of what might happen if she admitted it to herself.

 

She loved him.

 

She tested the words, repeating them in her mind to see whether they sounded wrong, but they felt like a weight being lifted off of her with every iteration. She loved Jaime. 

Jaime, the man he was beyond his Lannister heritage. She might even say in spite of his family, though perhaps not to his face. The man who left her sobbing in the snow like a maiden in a romantic song before she gets rescued by her knight.

But damn it, she _was_ a knight now, she wasn’t a maiden to be rescued and never was. Her role was never to wait around to be helped, she helped herself and the people around her and no one man is going to change that. Especially when that man was the one who needed saving.

She got up from her bed, snatching up her armour which was still caked with blood she hadn’t had the energy to clean yet, and began to latch it on as quickly as she could. The metal tolled like sept bells in the quiet of Winterfell, but she didn’t care about who she woke in her fervour to save Jaime from himself.

He was riding to the city, to _her_ , because he believed they deserved each other. But Brienne knew better. She knew he had the capacity to be good, and kind, and decent, but his family wouldn’t allow him to be weak, least of all Cersei. She wanted them to go down roaring like their damned sigil, but Brienne wasn’t going let Cersei make good men die for her anymore.

She fumbled for her one remaining candle still burning and went to the hearth, reigniting the flame with the embers of the one she’d let die out, and as she turned to the door, ready to saddle her horse and go rushing onto the Kingsroad, she remembered to leave an extra log on the top of the fire.


	2. The Ride South

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime rides on the Kingsroad, thinking about that which brought him there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took a month to write this. Still mad about Game of Thrones though so there's that.

As Jaime rode from Winterfell, he held the emotions he felt inside himself in a tight, vice-like grip. He ignored the way his lungs didn’t seem to draw air, and his stomach churned with anguish at the memory of her face as he turned away from her for the last time.

It was unexpected for him to feel so hollow and emotional over something like this. He certainly never felt this way for Cersei when he left her the last time. It felt almost as he had when he lost Myrcella in Dorne; a complete loss of the warmth he'd found in the world, ripped from him brutally and completely in an instant. His heart was pulled out of his chest by the poison used to kill his daughter, but it hurt just as much to know he plunged the knife into both his own, and Brienne's, hearts himself.

He wasn’t a good man. He deserved this fate. He deserved Cersei and her indifference to everyone around her.

He tried to remember a time she wasn’t cold, least of all to him, but found that every memory he had of them from the moment they were children to when she took the throne was tainted by their father’s teachings. Be smart, be ruthless, do as I say and we’ll have the kingdom.

Well, what if he didn’t want the kingdom? What if all he wanted was a family? People to care about him for who he was, and with who he wouldn’t be scared to show his so-called weaknesses to? All he ever really had was Cersei and Tyrion, and their father had ruined those relationships like he ruined their family with his ambition. 

But then there was Brienne.

She was so… different to his family. They were blazing red, gold and glory. She was gray, unwavering steel, and honourable to a fault. She was a perfect knight, and if what he’d heard from her about her family was true, they would be proud of all she’d done, unlike anyone in his house.

She, somehow, was everything he wanted from a family wrapped up in dented plate armour and skin scarred by her service to those around her. She was strong when he was too worn out to be, kind when he showed all his faults, she wouldn't let him get away with anything without a hard look and a sharp remark. He tried to warn her off him with every trick and tactic he could think of, but she was still there. Still by his side, at his table, in his bed... 

If there’s two things he’d never regret in his life, it would be making her a knight, and having the courage to kiss her. 

Sadness and longing brewed in his chest, threatening to boil over at a moment’s notice. He wanted nothing more than to stay with her, learn everything about her, share his life with her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t do that to her and taint her with more of his family’s gold-plated shit.

A few tears escaped him before he realised they were trailing down his face, and before a moment had passed he had begun to sob for Brienne of Tarth. He kept his head up, letting the tears fall, but his heaving breaths were the only noise coming from the forest he rode through.

He stayed that way for a while, his horse trotting slowly down the Kingsroad for him flanked by tall trees that swayed lazily in the icy winter breeze. The sound of horseshoes on stone turned to the dull thud of packed dirt, then to sloshing mud, making the journey that much slower. He couldn’t care less.

He felt his eyes grow tired and painful from crying so much, he assumed they were red and swollen by now, and he didn’t bother to hide his face or his emotions. That was, until he heard the sound of a horse riding towards him at breakneck speeds. 

For a fleeting, self-indulgent moment, he imagined Brienne coming after him, wanting to shake the sense into him and drag him back to Winterfell, or Evenfall Hall, or anywhere except for King’s Landing, but it passed quickly. How could he even begin to entertain the idea that she would still want him after everything he put her through? No. It was a selfish thought and nothing more.

He wiped his face on his sleeve, hoping his red eyes wouldn’t be noticeable if the rider decided to see who they were passing, and sat up straighter on his horse.

The rider caught up to him faster than he had thought possible, and to his dismay they slowed as they got close to him. He didn’t feel like chatting to a stranger on the way to King’s Landing and be forced to be polite when he wished for nothing more than to stew in his own gloom.

“Jaime.”

The voice called out somehow both quietly and with a force that made him shiver. It was the voice he wanted to hear most in the world right now, but not sounding like that. Like betrayal and with such pain that it would have brought him to his knees had he been standing on the ground.

He turned in his saddle slowly, almost not wanting to see her, and faced the woman he had tried to leave behind.

The first thing he noticed was that she was fully armoured and her saddlebags were full, which was alarming. Did she intend to fight him? He wouldn’t blame her if she did. Or was she going somewhere?

The second thing he noticed was the set of her jaw. Clenched the way she did when she was trying not to betray her emotions. Spending so much time with her, it became clear that it was usually because she was stopping herself from raising her voice in frustration, but she also did it when she was trying not to cry.

The relief from seeing her overwhelmed him and another surge of tears threatened to spill over. He attempted to keep his composure, however, and cleared his throat before speaking.

“Brienne.”


End file.
